


Bramble Heart

by songofproserpine



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: F/F, First Meetings, Head Injury, Mentally Ill Courier, Tumblr Prompts, light fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 13:29:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11209035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songofproserpine/pseuds/songofproserpine
Summary: From a prompt on Tumblr. An alternate take on how a female Courier Six met Veronica and was charmed from the start.





	Bramble Heart

A lover once said to her, “Your heart’s like a tumbleweed–prickly and aimless, blowin’ in the breeze.” And Rubicon didn’t know what she meant, not exactly, but she knew a lefthanded compliment when she heard it. And that one was surely as left as a would-be kind word could get.

Rubicon chased after a tumbleweed once, on the long I from Novac to any and all points beyond. The Strip sat in the distance like a burning colossus, all fury and light, blinding as it beckoned. Its light bled into her eyes as she snatched at the tumbleweed, thinking it must be like holding her heart in her hand, and she sank her fingers into the knotted rat’s nest tangle and bramble, surprised at the pain that followed. She held on tighter regardless. To suffer to hold such a thing must have a payoff. There must be a prize inside. There was no sense in feeling pain if it had no point behind it.

But there was nothing inside the tumbleweed, no thing at all, just space and air, barely cool at all. Like a Mojave Midnight. And Rubicon didn’t know why she cried, she only knew the tears and sobs came out heavy and slow, like a child in the night knowing no mother would come to calm her, and not knowing any other way to shape the sound of her grief but in leaden, wordless lumps that only her pillow and pale blonde hair would know.

So when she meets Veronica, and the singular but not quite unwelcome gal takes one look at Rubicon’s head and smiles, brilliant, bright, she thinks Finally, I might be in for a treat. A righthanded compliment this time. And why not have this hope? V’s is a smile that blinds and burns in its own way, right down to Rubi’s prickly heart.

Instead, what she gets is, “Has anyone ever told you that your hair is the exact shade of Easter basket hay yellow?”

“I don’t know what the end of that sentence means,” Rubicon says, her words a slurring purr on account of the buzzing in her head–she’d need Med-X in a bit if this kept up–and the stinging in her heart. Brambly and prickly and wayward she might be, but she could still feel, oh, she could still ache and sulk, sore and quiet.

Veronica didn’t hesitate, and when she spoke her words were exact and careful, with the air of someone used to talking fast and backpedaling slow over a point not easily understood. “Well, Easter’s a holiday back before the war–you know what a holiday is, right?–and it involved bunnies and chocolate and baskets and a man coming back from the dead. That bit might be of some interest to you, on account of your… troubles,” Veronica says, folding her arms. She’s still grinning, and Rubicon’s heart is still on guard, waiting for the blow to land. “And hay is grass that’s been torn up and dried out for horses to eat. It looks a little like your hair.”

Rubicon stands there and thinks, her thoughts sluggish and soaking wet with the weight of the wound still throbbing on her skull. Doc said that might happen. She could still think, still talk, still count upwards and back from one to one-hundred-fifty in Latin–not that anyone on this side of the Colorado would appreciate it–but the process would take some time. “Hay is for horses,” she said at last, thinking of a joke her Da used to say when he came around camp and taught her how the tribes now had to talk.

“That’s right,” Veronica said, her words drawing Rubicon back to the present. Her smile slid into a smirk that made Rubicon’s heart trip. “And also for your head, apparently.”

Rubicon felt her left arm lift up and her fingers slide through her hair. The movement was slow, labored; she wasn’t quite used to the weight of the Pipboy just yet, and sometimes her body couldn’t figure out what to do with itself when her thoughts said “move” and her nerves said “on my time, pal.” Most days she was lucky if she was able to get a grip on her gun or her trusty water canteen, let alone simple gestures at all.

“You’re wrong,” she heard herself say, combing her hair in front of her eyes. Veronica disappeared behind the bright veil, but the wind sweeping across the desert blew the strands apart, revealing the taller, darker-haired woman in peeks and glimpses. Rubicon thought hard and careful about what she wanted to say next, and when she spoke she delivered each word like a kiss with a cocked fist: hard, slow, deliberate. “Brilliant bright blonde hair. Not platinum, not gold. From a bottle buried in the back of a caravan pack. Label on the back said, ‘It’s a safer shade between Harlow and Monroe.’”

Veronica stared at Rubicon, dark eyes wide and, could it be?, studded with tears. But she blinked and knuckled away some grit that wormed its way in with another breeze, and after a beat she said, “That was almost like poetry.”

It took Rubicon two and a half minutes to realize a few things. One, that was a compliment, righthanded and maple syrup sweet. Two, Veronica was smiling again, the curve of her lips carrying a question she wanted to ask but wouldn’t voice. Three, if Rubicon didn’t ask it for her, she would not only be the biggest idiot the Mojave ever suffered, she would regret it for the rest of her days, or for however long she had left on her dash after the bullet.

“Hey,” she said, testing out a grin, hoping it came out right. “D'you wanna travel with me?”

Veronica didn’t make her wait. “It would be my pleasure–probably,” she said, holding out her left hand for Rubi to shake. The right was encumbered with something large and metal, a wicked looking weave of steel stretched across her knuckles.

Rubicon took Veronica’s hand and willed herself to shake it, squeezing the other woman’s fingers in a quick albeit limp spasm of muscle and bone. Her heart thumped at the touch, and she thought for a wild, wandering moment that if her heart were a knot of bramble and twine and thorns, that it also might have something new inside it now: a fire, brilliant, burning, bright, the tiniest of flames kindled from ash, a colossus of hope. And all this, on account of a kind word and a smile, and a silly joke about hay.


End file.
